Men's Cross Country Featured in Winter Alumni Magazine

Editor's Note: The feature story below was published in the Winter 2022 Concord University Alumni Magazine. The interviews for this story were conducted in early December. 

Mikey's Men.

It's not just a group of guys running around Athens in short shorts or some silly t-shirt design that was printed more than a decade ago.
Mikey's Men has become a way of life. A culture if you will.

You see, Concord University head men's and women's cross country and track & field coach Mike Cox has spent nearly half his life molding and crafting well-respected running programs in the heart of the southern coalfields of West Virginia where running has never really been king.

But over time, Cox, a former standout at Athens High School and later at Virginia Tech has taken young men and women from high schools throughout southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia and turned them into all-conference, all-region and All-American-caliber runners.

Cox began his journey at Concord right after the turn of the century and almost instantly built a conference championship men's cross country team in 2004. He earned another championship in 2007 with men's cross country. He found a women's cross country league title in 2010, but had to wait five more years for another men's title. Concord's men's cross country had a three-peat of conference championships from 2015-17.

The Mountain Lions made history in 2016 by being the first team from the Mountain East Conference to make the NCAA Division II National Championship.

Concord stayed patience for the next five years, but earned a bid to the National Championship last fall and just recently wrapped up a second straight trip to the NCAA Division II National Championship in Seattle on December 2.

So how has Cox built this running powerhouse in the center of Appalachia that among the top seven athletes that competed in Seattle features three runners from Summersville, West Virginia and a pair from Christiansburg, Virginia?

"A lot of it is luck," Cox said. "It's finding kids that want to make the commitment—looking around and finding kids that haven't been coached a ton is just luck too. Issac Prather ran for a year before college. Preston (Prather) ran three years of high school."

Issac, the elder of the Prather brothers and part of the trio from Summersville, has been at the forefront of the success. An All-American from last season and two-time Atlantic Regional Runner of the Year just wrapped his third time at the national championship.

"To be honest, I didn't have much attraction to running in college," Issac Prather said. "Coach Cox approached me, and the family aspect of Concord is what interested me the most."

The family atmosphere and tight-knit chemistry is what has attracted a lot of Cox's athletes to the Campus Beautiful.

"It all comes down to how close we are as a team," Logan Zuchelli, a sophomore from Fairmont, said.

"We have a really good team dynamic and we're all friends. I'm doing this for my teammates and I know they are doing it for me, so if I'm having a bad day, then I know they are there for me. I'll be there for them on their bad days. It's a really good connection we have at Concord as a team."

So, now you have a short background on how Cox hooks perspective athletes to Concord. How does the success happen when they get to Athens though?

Cedric Drennen, a graduate student like Issac Prather, from Clifton Forge, Virginia, reaped some of the benefits of Cox's training from his high school coach Jeremy Bartley, a CU alum from the 2000 graduating class, who had a personal connection with Cox during his time at CU.

"One of the biggest things that Jeremy did for me was show me how to run—how to build mileage, how to grind throughout the summer—and if you put everything together you can be successful in college," Drennen said of his time at Allegheny High School in southwestern Virginia.

"Jeremy told me I would be better off at a D2 setting than a D1, and I completely agree. He told me that Coach Cox was an amazing coach, and that anything is possible under his training."

And Cox's athletes have not only taken on the mentality of being grinders and outworking others, there's a certain connection about trust when it comes to running.

"To do able to do what we've done with kids that have been willing to make the commitment, buy into the process, work hard and trust me as much as I've trusted them," Cox said. "It's exciting to see how far we've come. It's really exciting for the program and for the school. I couldn't be happier."

Cox carefully examines talent and trust in perspective runners to see if they fit his culture, but once they're on campus they find another drive to have success…pride.

"All of us are talented runners who are close to home," Christiansburg native and junior Caleb Hatcher said. "Coach Cox and Concord wanted us to be on campus, but we chose to be here and we take pride in that. It makes us happier when we are working together and succeeding close to home."

Hatcher's high school teammate, senior Alex Watty, echoed the same sentiments.

"We express to each other that if we believe in each other, then we can accomplish what we want to get done," Watty said. "It's the I Can. I Will. We Will. We Can type mentality as a team. It's setting goals, but then doing the little things right and making sure we get there."

This group of Mountain Lions not only takes pride in wearing the Maroon and Gray, they want to leave their own legacy.

"We want to leave our mark and be the best that we possibly can, so we can down in the history books at Concord." Issac Prather said. And Prather has certainly left his mark on the program as he will leave the Athens in the spring as the most decorated men's cross country and track & field athlete in the history of CU.

The success of Concord men's cross country was a benefactor in Concord welcoming Ethan Board, a Summersville native, to Athens in the fall of 2021.

"It definitely did help to have a lot of familiar faces at Concord, like Preston and Issac," said Board, who as a sophomore cracked CU's national team in the fall. "I went to grade school with both of them. Running with Preston in high school was always good. Coach Cox brings a team aspect to the program, so that was a huge key to me coming to Concord."

Young men from diverse and different walks of life bonding together to create a pack known, actually no, a culture known as Mikey Men's

"The family atmosphere attracted me to Concord," Watty said. "I was able to stay close to home and close to my family, but all my teammates are family. It's a warm, welcoming environment for all of us. We're able to go to class, take care of our academics and hang out with our friends."

For Cox, a lifelong Mercer County resident—except for his five years of college at Virginia Tech—he takes pride in not only the programs he has built in Athens, but the culture.

"They push each other and they encourage each other," he said by phone from Seattle just prior to the national meet. "They want to beat each other on race day, but they take that in stride. Getting to nationals last year was big, but working together to get here again was definitely the whole goal. This isn't easy to do. Three times in my 22-year career."

How much does all this success really mean to Cox? Well, he struggled to find words.

"I get emotional talking about it to be honest," the teary-eyed head coach said. "I wear it on my sleeve. I'm just blessed to have the support I do. I just hope we can keep this going for another how many ever years."